Open to the Spirit - Weekday Homily Video

In my many years doing marriage counseling, I have run into couples who have been together 
for twenty and plus years, now mentioning how complicated relationships are. Partners 
discover stuff about the other that make them conclude that they have been fooled all these 
years. Comments like; “this is not the person I married twenty some years back, I have been 
living with a stranger, a monster or a beast!” come up after betrayal, domestic violence, and 
dysfunctional behaviors that crushes marriage relationships. This goes on to tell us how limited 
our capacity to understand all there is about the other person's details of life. As human beings, 
we are constantly in the process of becoming aware, growing in understanding of situations 
in our lives.

Imagine those three years: the disciples stayed with Jessus, they witnessed miracle after 
miracle, listened to sermon after sermon, and enjoyed intimate conversations with Jesus. Just 
being in His presence, observing how He interacted with others, must have been profoundly 
inspiring, Yet, even those formative years did not prepare them to bear all that Jesus wished 
to reveal.

The Spirit Reveals Itself

In today’s gospel, Jesus acknowledges limitations in the disciples current understanding, 
promising that the Spirit will gradually reveal deeper truths over time. No one has ever seen 
God. We know God because we have known Jesus It is Jesus the Son, who is close to him, 
who has made him known to us. As we come to know Jesus we come to know God. Yet, we 
never come to know Jesus fully in this life. We are always on a journey towards getting to 
know him. This knowing Jesus, which we never fully attain in this life, is not so much an 
intellectual knowing as a knowing of the heart, a knowing that is the fruit of love. We are always 
on the way towards that kind of knowing of Jesus. That is why Jesus promises that the Spirit 
of truth, who will guide us, speak to us, and declare all to us that we need to know. The Holy 
Spirit will make Jesus’s presence, teachings, and truth accessible to the disciples and to all of 
us.

Just as the disciples, we have an assurance that we are not alone, the Holy Spirit provides 
guidance when we lack understanding or face uncertainty. The Holy spirit has always 
something new to tell us There is always a new step in our relationship with the Lord that he 
is prompting us to take. He is always leading us to fuller light, a more complete truth. 
Let ours be the openness to listen to what the Spirit is showing us, trying to follow his lead in 
our lives. As we think back on our own lives and what has happened to us in the past, we 
realise how little we understood then what was happening in our own lives. We become wiser 
with the knowledge of hindsight even if we never fully understand. As Christians, working with 
the Jesus’ promise of the Spirit, we credit any insight and understanding we may have to the 
power of God’s spirit at work in our lives. Since God through Jesus is the source of truth, then 
the closer we draw to him and listen to his word, the more we grow in the knowledge of him 
and of the things to come.

• Today’s Readings
  
  
• Father Fulgens’s inspirational homily was recorded live during Mass at the Father Peyton Center today. You can watch the entire Mass on the Family Rosary Video streams channel on YouTube.
  
  
• Join the Rosary (11:30 am ET) and Mass (Noon ET) livestreams on the Family Rosary YouTube or Facebook page, Monday – Friday. Invite your friends and family to pray with you as well.